Ahmadinejad met with King Abdullah on March 4 in Riyadh, and publicly the two leaders agreed to fight growing Sunni-Shiite strife in the region.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told Newsweek in an interview that the king meanwhile warned Ahmadinejad to take seriously threats of US military strikes over Iran's refusal to halts its uranium enrichment program.

"On the nuclear issue, we warned him: 'Don't play with fire. Don't think the threat [of an American attack on Iran] is a nonexistent threat; think that it's a real threat, maybe even a palpable threat,'" Abdullah said in a question-and-answer interview posted on the Newsweek website Friday.

"Why do you want to take a chance on that and harm your country?" the king continued, according to Abdullah. "What is the rush? Why do you have to do it [enrich uranium] this year and not next year or the year after? Or five years from now? What is the real rush in it?"

The king "speaks to everybody frankly," Abdullah said, adding that his ruler bluntly told Ahmadinejad: "You're interfering in Arab affairs," an apparent reference to Iran's alleged role in stoking the violence in Iraq.

Ahmadinejad listened, then denied any interference. "But we said, 'Whether you deny it or not, this is creating bad feelings for Iran and we think you should stop,'" Abdullah told Newsweek.

The Saudi foreign minister also said it was "a catastrophe" for Iran to be holding 15 British sailors and marines it had captured on March 23. Iran insists the personnel were detained for being in Iranian waters but Britain maintains they were inside Iraqi waters.

"This is just not the time for them to have a problem like that looming. We tell them that," Abdullah said.

On Wednesday, the Saudi king criticized the US occupation of Iraq in an opening address to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh -- a move some observers say is an effort to distance himself from the embattled Bush administration.